Designing the Bayous

The Control of Water in the Atchafalaya Basin, 1800-1995

By Martin Reuss

Publication Year: 2004

Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River Basin is one of the most dynamic and critical environments in the country. It sustains the nation’s last cypress-tupelo wetland and provides a habitat for many species of animals. Endowed with natural gas and oil fields, the basin also supports a large commercial fisheries industry. Perhaps most crucial, it remains a primary component of the plan to control the Mississippi River and relieve flooding in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and other communities in the lower river valley.
The continuing health of the basin is a reflection not of nature, but of the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. With levee building and clearing in the nineteenth century and damming, dredging, and floodway construction in the twentieth, the basin was converted from a vast forested swamp into a designer wetland, where human aspirations and nature maintained a precarious equilibrium.
Originally published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers primarily for internal distribution, this environmental and political history of the Atchafalaya Basin is an unflinching account of the transformation of an area that has endured perhaps more human manipulation than any other natural environment in the nation. Martin Reuss provides a new preface to bring us up-to-date on the state of the basin, which remains both an engineering contrivance and natural wonder.

Cover

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface to Texas A&M Edition

THE FIRST EDITION of this book took the story to 1995. Since that time,
the tensions first outlined in Designing the Bayous have continued to
influence Louisianaâs Atchafalaya Basin, one of the most hydraulically
dynamic and critical...

Preface

AS A HISTORIAN for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, I have had an
unusual opportunity to learn something of the Corpsâ culture, the frustrations
and rewards of the engineering profession, and the peculiar
challenges facing bureaucrats in the public sector. At the same time, I
have often sympathized with many of the environmental concerns raised
in the last twenty years...

Abbreviations

Prologue

ABOUT 20 MILES our OF BATON ROUGE on 1-10, past Grosse Tete
and Ramah, and just past the sign "Atchafalaya Swamp Floodway," the
road unexpectedly rises and the highway perches on stilts. For 17.5
miles this "Swamp Expressway" straddles swampland...

Chapter 1. Early Flood Control Efforts, Louisiana Style

THEATCHAFALAYABASINHASALWAYS BEEN a source of controversy.
Nothing about it-not even its name-has led to easy agreement.
Thomas Hutchins, the "Geographer to the United States" after the
Revolutionary War, called the river the "Chafalaya" and thought the
land through which it flowed "one of the most fertile countries in the
world."1...

Chapter 2. Interregnum: Growing Federal Involvement

THE PERIOD FROM JUST BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR to the early 1880s
may be considered an interregnum in the story of the Atchafalaya Basin.
Devastated by the Civil War and reconstruction, Louisiana attempted
to reconstruct levees and remove navigation...

Chapter 3. The Outlet Question

OFTEN THE SIMPLEST QUESTION provokes the most complicated
answer: should engineers disperse flood waters or confine them? As
cities rose along the Mississippi River, as farms were developed and
forests cleared, the question increasingly took on emotional overtones.
In Louisiana, riparian landowners and merchants who depended on
river transportation sought...

Chapter 4. Apres Le Deluge: The Jadwin Plan

THE FLOODING THAT ENDED the MRC's dependence on levees
occurred in 1927. One of the nation's worst peacetime disasters killed
between 250 and 500 people, flooded over 16 million acres, and
destroyed 41,000 buildings. The Red Cross at one time cared for over
600,000 people, half of whom lived in temporary...

Chapter 5 .The Politics of Engineering

THE TIMES CALLED FOR POLITICAL ADJUSTMENT, and no part of
government went untouched. One might have predicted that the Corps'
fortunes would rise in the administration of a President who was a
former engineer. Engineers, Hoover had said, "comprise a force in the
community absolutely unique...

Chapter 6. Louisiana and Mississippi: The Battle over Floodways

THROUGHOur ROOSEVELT'S NEW DEAL administration, John
Overton and Will Whittington dominated federal legislation affecting
the lower Mississippi River. They were instrumental in formulating
their states' positions on flood control...

Chapter 7. The Old River Problem

By THE END OF 1941, contours of the modern Atchafalaya Basin
floodway system had emerged. Although the Morganza Floodway
intake structure was not yet in place and some gaps remained in the
levee system, most of the guide levees had been built, as had the levees
along the banks of the Atchafalaya River...

Chapter 8. Let the Public Be Heard: Reconciling Multiple Objectives

JUST AS THE CORPS COMPLETED the Old River Control Structure
project in 1963, it advanced plans for further engineering of the
Atchafalaya Basin. These plans responded to problems that had already
become apparent in the mid-1950s. The levees continuously subsided
because of swampy land underneath them...

Chapter 9. Environmental Activist and the Corps of Engineers

WHENPRESIDENfNIXON SIGNED the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) on the first day of the new year, 1970, he changed
dramatically the way in which federal agencies plan public works
projects. The act declared that it was the "continuing policy of the
Federal Government...to create and maintain conditions under which
man and nature can exist in productive...

Chapter 10. Defending the Turf

MOST CANOEISTS PADDLING in the Atchafalaya Basin's bayous
probably paid little attention to the acrimonious debates dividing the
Atchafalaya Basin Agency Management Group. Their vision was
simpler. For them, the basin was a commingling of flora and fauna,
water and land, unlike anywhere else...

Chapter 11. Denouement

DESPITE ITS BEST EFFORTS, the Corps floundered when it attempted
to forge a consensus on the future of the Atchafalaya Basin. Many
people continued to doubt the agency's environmental sensitivity, while
others saw the Corps sacrificing its commitment to a critical flood
control project. At times developing agreements on even the most
routine matters seemed beyond reach...

Afterword: A Sense of Place, A Sense of Balance

THE ATCHAFALAYA BASIN has essentially become a "designer
wedand," a monument to human contrivance and ingenuity. Like so
many other places in the world-European woodlands, California's
Central Valley, refurbished beaches along the Atlantic Coast, or the
manicured English landscape...

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